Fan-made Pokémon Gold port loses 3D Voxel Mod support in latest gen1recomp update

The fan-made Pokémon port gen1recomp has added support for Pokémon Gold, but the highly anticipated 3D Voxel Mod fails to load for most users in the new version. Creator bryanthaboi has not yet issued an official statement about the incompatibility, though complaints have already surfaced online about the mod refusing to start.

The update is available on PC, Android, iOS, Linux, and macOS. As before, you will need to load your own dumped ROM from an official copy of the game you own. Those who already have the app installed can simply check for updates, and the latest version with Pokémon Gold support should install normally.

The gen1recomp project by bryanthaboi quickly gained traction over the past few days thanks to the striking Dramatic Shape Voxel Mod and other add-ons, including one that places Pokémon wandering around the game world. Now that second-generation titles have joined the supported list, some fans have found that the visual modification no longer works.

It is worth noting that gen1recomp is not a traditional recompilation. The project is a native recreation built on the LÖVE2D engine, where code from the first and second Pokémon generations is decoded directly from ROM files supplied by the player, while engine logic and map behavior are hand-written in Lua. Technically, this makes it an independent implementation rather than a simple port of the original code.

Alongside bryanthaboi's release, a fork of the original gen1recomp called Gen2Recomped appeared, which also supports Pokémon Gold and Silver. According to rumors, this fork is essentially a vibe-coded version of gen1recomp, making it the second such project in the chain. The community has already accused gen1recomp itself of being partly vibe-coded, so Gen2Recomped looks like a vibe-coded project of a vibe-coded project.

It remains unclear when Pokémon Silver support will arrive in gen1recomp, but given that Gold has just been added, Silver is expected to follow soon. Fans are hoping that official 3D Voxel Mod support will be fixed alongside it.